ONLINE SECURITY – What can you do to become more vigilant?
This the first, in series of Blog posts, to help you with identifying the threats and current redirect practices being conducted by online scammers.
One of the tactics that online scammers are using to try to fool people into visiting malicious websites is a technique called a URL redirect.
Ok, I can hear some of you asking, “What in the world is a URL redirect?”
I can also hear some of you asking, “What is a URL??”
Not a problem, the term ‘URL’ stands for Uniform Resource Locator.
For example, www.microsoft.com is a URL. So is www.macys.com.
Now, that we’re clear on that, let’s get into how online scammers are ‘redirecting’ these URLs, to fool you into landing on a malicious, malware-laden website.
Once you type in a URL, you will often get directed to a sub-domain within that site you are trying to visit.
Ok, I did it again!
“What is a sub-domain, you’re asking – right?
www.microsoft.com is a primary domain;
accounts.microsoft.com would be a sub-domain because it is part of the primary domain.
Why is that?
That’s because the domain is still .microsoft.com, it just has the word ‘accounts’ in front of it.
That is just one example.
Here is where people are getting fooled:
You must always pay attention to the URL (the website) of the page you have landed on.
Yes, with each mouse-click as you advance through the different pages within that website.
For example, if you happen to go to a site like macys.com . . . (see below)
. . . and then you somehow get redirected to a site called macysdirectonline.com, would you continue to shop online with that site?
No, of course not.
These are the questions that you need to ask yourselves.
You wouldn’t have known that you were redirected to the macysdirectonline.com website, unless you were closely watching the URL bar that you typed your website into.
That is why this is so critical, for you to pay attention to each site that comes up after you click something.
This is where we are all getting fooled and ultimately paying dearly for our own inabilities to keep a close eye on each website URL that pops up.
Here is a short-list of primary domains that most of you are familiar with:
| Adobe | Acrobat, Reader, Flash, Photoshop, Premier, Dreamweaver | www.adobe.com |
| Chrome, Android, Gmail | www.google.com | |
| Intuit | QuickBooks, TurboTax | www.intuit.com |
| Microsoft | Windows, Office, IE, Edge, XBox | www.microsoft.com |
| Mozilla | Firefox | www.mozilla.com |
| Oracle | Java, VirtualBox, MySQL | www.oracle.com |
| Amazon | Web Services, Online Shopping | www.amazon.com |
For more information on Online Security Best-Practice tactics, please do not hesitate to call
Symposit LLC @ 571-224-4739.
You can also email us @ support@3.84.138.198.
